Vinyl Asylum

Vinyl at VSAC 2003

While VSAC is a tube show, vinyl was found in abundance. Nearly every room featured the big, black spinning disks. Here are some highlights:

Chris Brady of Teres Audio brought his new Teres 340, $6,350, with a new lead loaded wood platter. He's also added more mass under the table as shown in the closeup shot.

Over in the Welborne room, we found the more modest, Teres 245 with solid acrylic platter, $2,175-$2,575.

The 245 sounds quite good, but then we had the platter shoot off. Next, Chris swapped the platter for one that is lead shot loaded.

Essentially, this brings the table up to the Teres 255, $2,575-$2,975, level. The sound changed substanstially with added weight and texture, black back ground and more solid imaging. The upgrade is surely worth the price. Also note the new wood clamp. Again, compared to the old style, just changing the clamp was a definate improvement adding more life and sparkle to the sound.

Finally, we got to the new lead shot loaded wood platter, Teres 265, $3,750. The improvement again was obvious, but less so that the acrylic with shot. Both shared solid imaging and wonderful texture. The primary difference appeared to be added dynamics and liveliness with the wood. There is a cost to pay for the improvement however, in that surface noise was also accentuated. Ultimately, your cartridge and arm combination will likely be a primary consideration in determining your personal preference.

Here's a Nottingham Interspace table with the Dynavector 10x4 cartridge. The system used an Audio Reseach PH3 phono stage and small Proac speakers with excellent results.

We also found a three armed wonder next door, a Clear Audio Master Solution, I believe.

Thom Mackris of Galibier Design also had a few of his Quattro tables around the show. As I understand it, these are variants of the Redpoint tables which has now split into two sepearate companies. Below is the Quattro Signature.

Here's the Redpoint Testa Rossa XS from the Lowther-America room. The arm is a Triplanar with an Ortofon SPU Royal N into Jensen 34DX 1 :35 step ups, $6200.00 + $350.00 for record weight sans arm.

Hopefully, Steve Rochlin won't mind, but I didn't get a good shot of the Brian Cherry's new table in the DIYCable/Adire room pictured above. It's done in China, all acrylic - both the isolated plinth and the platter - a free standing DC motor, ceramic ball and teflon bearing, the plinth can be drilled for many different arms, priced around $600-650.

And finally, in the Bottlehead room, you have the Progressive Engineering table sitting on one of Ken Lyon's Neuance shelves. It sounded quite good with Doc's Seduction phono stage.